The Man Who Knew Nothing About Memoir
May 17, 2011 § 17 Comments
Three dumb things James Frey said to Oprah yesterday, still defending his memoir which is anything but:
“I thought of it as a statement of defiance. I wrote it without any respect for what is fact, what is fiction.”
“I’m more influenced by artists than writers. Let’s say you look at a cubist self-portrait. It doesn’t look anything like Picasso. So when I was writing the book I was thinking of it like that.”
“I don’t have a lot of respect for memoir.”
This explains a lot.
He’s definitely on the defense! As he should be. He has no respect for the reader, much less memoir.
What concerns me most is that others might listen to Frey and catch his anti-memoir virus.
Replied memoir, “Right back atcha.”
He never set out to name the book a memoir. I got a sense that he wanted to be published at all costs, so he bowed to the suggestion of his publisher. When dollars were waved in front of his face, he followed them, admitting now that he wanted to be published and ethics were not one of his strong suits. His experience illustrated a powerful message that had his book not been promoted so worldwide as any book that Oprah takes on, likely would otherwise have remained in obscurity. Once her name was associated with it, she felt duped and just as publicly flogged him.
I sense that between his addictions and his general lackluster life, he wrote what he had to write and played the game to get it to sell and sell it did.
Yesterday on the show, I had the sense he has been rehearsed in the 2008 phone call Oprah speaks of on her website, and admire her for investing some precious minutes in two of her last shows on the issue. To publicly mend fences says once again how her sense of forgiveness and fair play can serve as a lesson for us all.
Oh that is painfully brutal to read. If he deserved any respect himself I might be embarrassed for him…
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Whoever (Dinty??) attached the graphic said it all. Brilliant caption.
Thank you, Marcia, for noticing, Dinty
That photo is awesome.
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I would have gone for the Act of Contrition……..in Latin.
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You know how Leonardo DaVinci painted the Mona Lisa on top of another painting? Well, that is sort of what I was doing except I named the painting “Self-portrait of the Artist Smiling Glibly.”
I thought one of the most shocking things he said was, “Everyone who writes memoir does what I did.”
Is Mr. Frey suggesting via the Picasso reference that he, like Picasso, has reinvented an art form? Because if he is, that may be his most ludicrous lie to date.
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